At 7pm tonight (Monday) Jose Huizar will be presenting his/the city’s plan to create a unsafe & hazardous environment for The Handicapped, the Aged & the Disabled. I will be there in person to fight their radical unsafe plans for our city streets. Come make your voice heard at Center for the Arts Eagle Rock at 2225 Colorado Blvd., LA, CA 90041. This idiocy that screws over old people, handicapped people & disabled people is being rammed down cities across California.

Yes, a bike lane is certainly radical. Although how exactly they screw over old people, the handicapped and disabled is beyond me.

I would think calmer, slower and saner streets would benefit everyone. But what the hell do I know?

The scary thing is that the mad rants of the uninformed and overly imaginative seem to bear as much weight with our elected officials as those who merely want safe streets for everyone, regardless of mode of transportation.

Perhaps because there’s no rationality requirement to cast a ballot. And the votes of the angry and willfully ignorant — or indignorant, as my friend and fellow blogger Will Campbell once called them — count every bit as much as those who go to the effort to actually understand the issues they’re voting on.

Let alone the rabid NIMBYists willing to fight to the death in kneejerk opposition to any attempt to change anything in their neighborhood, for better or worse.

Like the email I was recently forwarded from a Westside homeowners association questioning the latest plan to install a floating bike lane on Westwood Blvd, even though it wouldn’t result in the loss of a single traffic lane or parking space.

In other words, it would create space for much-needed bike lanes on Westwood without any impact whatsoever on parking or traffic. The only change that would affect motorists is that the rush hour no-parking zones would flip from one side of the street to the other; with parking allowed on the east side of the street in the morning, and the west side in the evening.

Yet outrage remains that customers might actually have to cross the street to do business with the local establishments — many, if not most of which have their own parking behind, under or next to their buildings.

Trust me. If your customers aren’t willing to cross the street to do business with your fine establishment, your problems go far beyond which side they have to park on.

The email goes on to add that members of the homeowner’s association have been counting bicyclists at peak hours on the boulevard, with the totals ranging from eight to 23. Although it doesn’t mention whether that’s per hour, day or minute.

But rather than proving the bike lanes aren’t needed, as opponents infer, it actually shows exactly the opposite.

Because bicyclists aren’t going to ride a street they think is dangerous. The fact that anyone at all attempts to ride such a heavily trafficked street, with zero infrastructure for bicycling south of Santa Monica Blvd, points to the latent demand for bike lanes there.

If you build it, they will come.

And if you don’t, they will anyway. Especially once the Westwood Boulevard Expo Line station opens in a few years, and the street provides the only direct link between the station and the UCLA campus.

If you want to ensure gridlock, force all those arriving and departing riders to take the lane in front of impatient drivers to get to and from school every day. Let alone ensure a dramatic spike in the number of collisions on the boulevard, serious and otherwise.

Then again, NIMBY homeowners in the area have been fighting the station, the ground-level crossing and the train itself for years now.

Of course, it’s not just NELA or Westwood.

The same battles seem to take place anywhere bike lanes go in, including L.A.’s sleepy port town of San Pedro, where motorists have grabbed their pitchforks and torches to demand removal of the seemingly monstrous bike lanes on Westmont Blvd.

Never mind that the road diet that resulted in the bike lanes was installed, in part, to calm traffic in front of a school.

Maybe it’s just me, but if I had kids in that school, I would demand everything possible be done to protect my child’s safety. Not rip the lanes out to protect the right of drivers to continue to speed and put students’ and teachers’ lives in jeopardy.

Especially since it only causes congestion for forty minutes a day as parents drop off and pick up their kids.

After all, it’s not like there’s any other alternatives to dropping your kids off directly in front of the school. Like dropping them off on the nearest cross street, maybe. Or God forbid, actually allowing your kids to use those same bike lanes to safely ride to school.

They now have the entire summer to work with city and school officials to find a solution. But better to hold a community meeting next week to demand a return to the previous status quo.

So what if a kid gets hit by a speeding car. That’s just the price you pay for a slightly faster commute, right?

Motor vehicles have long enjoyed full dominion over virtually 100% of the roadways in this country. All we’re asking for is a modicum of safe space to keep us from bouncing painfully off those bumpers.

Besides, any war on cars would require attacking ourselves, as the overwhelming majority of bike riders are motorists, as well.

Meanwhile, back in New York, the local papers gleefully cite the slightest glitch as proof the rollout of the new Citi Bike program is an unmitigated disaster. As if any massive new program could be expected to unfurl without a hitch.

Update: Fox 11 reports on last night’s meeting in Eagle Rock to rant about discuss the proposed bike lanes on Colorado Blvd. The station reports that there was more support for the lanes than opposition, leading Councilmember Jose Huizar to say the lanes will go forward. Although the report misidentifies LADOT’s Nate Baird as the councilmember; easy to understand since they look so much alike, right?

Something that doesn’t fill me with despair — just the opposite, in fact — is the simple fact that I’m able to sit here writing about those anti-bike haters to begin with.

It was exactly one month ago that my laptop died in the middle of using it; a few seconds and a couple quick blinks, and I was out of business for the foreseeable future.

Business being a relative term for a non-income producing blog.

Still, it was thanks to the readers of this blog that I was able to get back to work less than two weeks later. The contributions you made covered a little over half the cost of a new laptop and the updated software I needed to operate it.

That’s what happens when you don’t upgrade anything for, oh, five years or so.

I call it the Miracle on the Westside. It’s my own personal tale of the loaves and fishes, as the few dollars in my own pocket somehow expanded to cut the costs down to where the balance could fit on my wife’s credit card.

How I’m going to pay her back is another matter.

But you’ve done more than you will ever know to restore my faith, in whatever way you want to interpret that. And make me more committed than ever to use this new laptop to fight for our right to the roads — and to return home safely when we’re done.

Let alone overcome the irrational objections that stand in our way.

And for that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. One that grew three sizes that day.

13 comments

You would want to think it’s something as simple as advocates for the oil industry trying to diminish the growing bicycling community. But I’m afraid it’s more than likely a probable psychological change in our frame of mind when we get behind the wheel of an auto. Nothing.. NOTHING should be in our way slowing us down and forcing us to maneuver around a moving obstacle. Sad state for sure.
PS… Why would anyone want to grow up…???

I’ve lived in Westwood for 7 or 8 years now, and I never even knew we had a neighborhood council until I found out about it at the LADOT hearing over on Sepulveda and Exposition a few months back. I’m not sure who they claim to represent, because nobody on there asked this resident’s opinion. Who are these groups, and how do they manage to throw around any weight in these kinds of hearings? Can I make up my own group and make myself sound more important in these meetings?

Yes you can. If you want to form the Westwood Apartment Renters Association, I’m all in. Although you’d better do it quickly, since we’re being priced out of the neighborhood we’ve called home for two decades.

Neighborhood councils are part of the City of LA structure and they are funded by the city. They are elected by “stakeholders” in the neighborhood, which I believe is defined as residents, employees and business-owners. You can probably find out when and where they meet (their meetings are public) through the city’s website. They are important because they a link between your neighborhood and the city in general, and their support or opposition for a project can have an impact on whether it goes forward.

I thought it might be interesting to see what your link to the wicked witch of the WSJ would be about – and it was much worse than I could have imagined. I grew up with a core belief for years that in a world of fact-less factoids and baseless claims and beliefs by individuals at every level of society, a person could at least find reasoned opinion in the WSJ, it was a seismic shock to listen to this talking head from their editorial board and her handler. When, in the course a long diatribe of unsupported allegations about the dangers of bicycling in an unban environment, the strongest comment Ms. Rabinowitz could muster was that all the blue from the bike share bikes would be a blight on the neighborhood, I got a new appreciation for how thankless and frustrating bike advocacy work continues to be.

Maybe the only answer is to get more and more pedals on the street, until this kind of nonsense just does not resonate with anyone any longer.
(PS – I stopped reading the WSJ a while back and clearly made the right decision, if this is the caliber of staff at their Board level these days)

I too clicked on the WSJ link and it was over the top. I kept looking over at my Tibetan terrier and asking her, “Is this a Saturday Night Live skit?” Like Chet said, apparently it’s what goes for legitimate news today.

I want to thank you, Ted, for keeping cyclists safe and informed. The Internet was a dark place without you.

Yes Grryly your question is all important as what we hear and what she in her years has learned too many people hear her saying is all important. She was not talking to us. Confronted with facts over and over she smoothly moved on preventing her listeners from being troubled by them at all or even considering them. She even pretended to be poor, herself, mocking the mayor’s riches, arguing using the subway is something that ordinary people have to do, I guess, when we should understand that such waste of transit funds is why “citibank” is an essence a false flag’s ample beneficence instead of actually public actual good not worse then walmart cheap trikes having if we would as I’ve said we certainly should say all “no thanks” for it’s in that that there is real pranks. She’s grinning and taking a a falla for with enemies like those motorless in a bad way as there tanks not really even secretly she’s saying thanks. Imagine if instead a place to share what would have motocity bleed real red was to us fed. Those in blue are lettered a, tattooed and finally in death available for the likes of her to prey. Not green, but white will wash with red the blue and forever back in our death bed will instead we be screwed rational use of path, because trillions spent on subways only raises the rent denying real mobility for all without any restraint from gall is what her makeup and snake up answer in her call. But mainly I wanted to say “AUTOcratic”!!! she’s calling him that? Fat!

[…] I Get It. They Hate Us. What I Don’t Get Is Why (“If you build it, they will come. And if you don’t, they will anyway. Especially once the Westwood Boulevard Expo Line station opens in a few years, and the street provides the only direct link between the station and the UCLA campus.”) Biking In LA […]